Hi Folks,

There is now a video clip online of a live performance of GIFT (One Iraqi Child) from the Darebin Music Feast Concert last year. A fantastic group of musicians joined me for this song and the short eclectic introduction to the song combines Islamic chanting, feedback blues harp harmonics, drums, stand-up bass, cello, violin and guitar improv. It requires patience to download but the quality is excellent and it was a passionate performance. (go to the following SITE and click: Video.)

Anyone tuning into 3RRR in Melbourne on Saturday morning approx 12:30 will also hear yours truly on Filmbuffs discussing a couple of films: The Exorcist - The Beginning, (which I didn't like) and Control (which I did.) I'll also be bringing a copy of the original authentic Roman Catholic Exorcism Ritual with me and reading a few juicy bits so if you have any family members showing the whites of their eyes and hocking up green mucous, make sure to seat them near the radio.

I'll also be performing at the Frankston Guitar Festival on Sunday March 20 at 1 pm, and then again, with DIFFICULT WOMEN and JUDY SMALL at the Brunswick Music Festival at 8 pm. (details on website.)

Fact Probably Not Worth Knowing No. 1
Burt Reynolds was originally cast to be Han Solo in the first Star Wars film. He dropped out before filming.

Favourite Reader Feedback of the Week

Hey Joe,
Thanks for the mention of Paolo Conte. He's been a fave of mine since his Best of comp was released here in the States back in '98 on Nonesuch. A friend in the music business at the time sent me a huge package of promo's . . . and it included the collection . . . when I saw it I had absolutely no idea who Paolo was, but upon further investigation quickly came to love & appreciate his art. My wife & I were married this past September, and she walked down the isle to a tune from Paolo's "Reveries" album. The world needs more Paolo's...Thanks again! Tim B. New York NY.

Joe,
I love your site - specially since you put on of my essays on it, but must take issue with the toilet seat rant. NO ONE has ever fallen into the toilet bowl because the seat was left DOWN. Slán a Chara, Adrien B.

Hi  Joe,
I enjoy the ramblings on your newsletter. I thought you might find this an interesting snippet for 'the rag'
Regards, Terry Dwyer

Does the statement, "We've always done it that way" ring any bells? ... read to the end...

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.
That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads.
Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did "they" use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions.
The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing..
The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

Now the twist to the story

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.
The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's arse.

Fact Probably Not Worth Knowing No. 2
20% of Americans think that the sun orbits around the Earth.

The President Clears It All Up 
Where the President explains the virtues of his Social Security plan, Tampa, FL, Feb. 4, 2005.  This is the verbatim record. 
 
Woman in audience:   I don't really understand. How is it the new [Social Security] plan is going to fix that problem? 
 
President Bush:   Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table. Whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to that has been promised. Does that make any sense to you?  It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the -- like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.
(thanks to James Davern)

(Note: ????????????? Perhaps, just as we now have converted to metric, we should start refiguring the distance between train rails in units of four President George W Bush arse widths.)

Fact Probably Not Worth Knowing No. 3
Seven percent of Americans claim they never bathe at all.

FILM

PERSONA NON GRATA
directed by Oliver Stone

(Note: Persona Non Grata: latin diplomatic jargon for a foreigner who is officially unwelcome in another country.)

In March 2002, with diplomacy deadlocked and violence escalating between Israelis and Palestinians, Oliver Stone sought out interviews with leaders on both sides of the conflict. Over five days, Stone and his documentary film crew traveled the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Ramallah, documenting life in the face of daily threats of violence. Without abandoning hope for a peaceful solution, the timely America Undercover documentary special PERSONA NON GRATA offers a thought-provoking, first-hand look at this complex conflict Among those interviewed by Stone are former Israeli Prime Ministers Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu; European diplomats Miguel Moratinos and Christian Jeuret; Hasan Yosef, a spokesman for the political wing of Hamas; and a group of masked fighters from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. As the film crew attempts to reach Palestinian President Yasir Arafat, they are caught up in bloody violence: A Palestinian suicide bomber kills 20 Israelis at the Passover Massacre, and the Israeli military closes the streets of Ramallah and destroys Arafat's compound. (more)

MUSIC

FIONA APPLE
Whoa! Where did she come from?
AUDIO .MP3 : GET HIM BACK

Fact Probably Not Worth Knowing No. 4
In her later years, Florence Nightingale kept a pet owl in her pocket

Tipping a Beer with an American Fascist
By William Pitt

Part of my weekly routine involves a quiet beer and a book at my local tavern at the end of the week. The place is deserted on Sunday nights ­ just myself and Jim the bartender most of the time ­ so I can sit in a little cone of silence with a pint of Boddington's and plow through whatever's next. This week, by the way, it's George Washington, A Life by Willard Sterne Randall. Good stuff so far. I was a few pages into the book when a man with a gray beard and a battered white outback hat sat down beside me and ordered a drink. I have this terrible habit of talking to strangers ­ yes, I am not the guy you want to sit next to on the plane ­ so I struck up a conversation. Two hours later, I finally crept back into the night with my head spinning, and not from the beer. I had just finished talking politics with a true-blue American fascist.
He first introduced himself to me as a self-proclaimed 'redneck' and used his professional name, which I will not repeat because, frankly, though he scared the cheese out of me with his beliefs, he was a personable enough fellow and I do not want to burn him behind his back. It seems this man is a fairly well-known folk singer. He had an album of his in his back pocket, and gave it to me. I have it sitting here on my desk; the back cover has a picture of him feeding a horse on the porch of some ancient wilderness cabin.
After a while, we violated the First Rule of Bars and started talking politics. It became clear from the outset that we were on opposite poles of the political spectrum. He described himself as a Bush-supporter, and I described myself as quite the opposite. Both of us lamented the fact that politics in America had become so tribal that people of good conscience had trouble coming to a consensus on issues of great importance. This man was articulate, informed on the news of the day, and struck me as being quite intelligent. Two good fellows like us, I said at the beginning, could probably fix things in a week if we had the chance.

Then he started talking. . . (article)

Pakistan Reviving Nuclear Black Market, Experts Say
by Louis Charbonneau
 
VIENNA -- Pakistan has developed new illicit channels to upgrade its nuclear weapons program, despite efforts by the U.N. atomic watchdog to shut down all illegal procurement avenues, diplomats and nuclear experts said. Western diplomats familiar with an investigation of the nuclear black market by the U.N.'s Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said this news was disturbing. While Pakistan appeared to be shopping for its own needs, the existence of some nuclear black market channels meant there were still ways for rogue states or terrorist groups to acquire technology that could be used in atomic weapons, they said.
"General procurement efforts (by Pakistan) are going on. It is a determined effort," a diplomat from a member of the 44-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "This was discussed at an NSG meeting in Vienna last week." Nuclear experts said these channels involved new middlemen who had not played a role in earlier deals which came to light last year. These are not the same people. They're new, which is worrying," said one Western diplomat. (article)

Fact Probably Not Worth Knowing No. 5
Each year, more people are killed by teddy bears than by grizzly bears.

Etch-A-Sketch Artist

For nearly 20 years Nicole Falzone has been creating portraits of renowned personalities. Her fine art portraits of these individuals have been exhibited throughout the United States including Los Angeles, Austin, New York City, Boston, and Washington, D.C. Nicole has been a professional fine artist for many years. As a child she explored her artistic talents on the Etch A Sketch, discovering a deep interest in the challenge of creating fine art with a unique medium consisting of two knobs and one continuous line. Straight lines were a snap but getting a line to curve was another story. The ultimate test of her skill was drawing a perfect circle. To accomplish this one must continuously twist both knobs and then reverse direction with both knobs simultaneously in order to trace back to the point of origin."Knowing all this makes professional Etch A Sketch artist Nicole Falzone the Monet of the Magic Screen. After talking with her about her unusual skill, I discovered that she is also an ambidextrous dyslexic drummer. Mystery solved." Tim Walsh, Keys Publishing, 2002. (website)

Etch-A-Sketch Technical Support

Q: My Etch-A-Sketch has all of these funny little lines all over the screen.
A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: How do I turn my Etch-A-Sketch off?
A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: What's the shortcut for Undo?
A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: How do I create a New Document window?
A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: How do I set the background and foreground to the same color?
A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: What is the proper procedure for rebooting my Etch-A-Sketch?
A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: How do I delete a document on my Etch-A-Sketch?
A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: How do I save my Etch-A-Sketch document?
A: Don't shake it.

HUMOUR

Four Golfers

Four men went to play golf.

Three of them headed to the first tee and the fourth went into the clubhouse to take care of the bill. The three men started talking and bragging about their sons.

The first man told the others, "My son is a home builder, and he is so successful he gave a friend a new home for free. Just gave it to him!"

The second man said, "My son was a car salesman, and now he owns a multi-line dealership. He's so successful that he gave one of his friends a new Mercedes, fully loaded."

The third man, not wanting to be outdone, bragged, "My son is a stockbroker, and he's doing so well that he gave his friend an entire stock and bond portfolio."

The fourth man joined them on the tee after a few minutes of taking care of business. The first man mentioned, "We were just talking about our sons. How is yours doing?"

The fourth man replied, "Well, my son is gay and go-go dances in a gay bar."

The other three men grew silent while holding back their laughter, as he continued, "I'm not totally thrilled about the dancing job, but he must be doing well. His last three boyfriends gave him a house, a new Mercedes, and a complete stock portfolio!"
(thanks to Frank Dolce)

Mount Kilimanjaro Photo Wake-Up Call for Action Against Global Warming
by Jeremy Lovell
 
LONDON -- A photo of Mount Kilimanjaro stripped of its snowcap for the first time in 11,000 years will be used as dramatic testimony for action against global warming as ministers from the world's biggest polluters meet on Tuesday. (photo and article)

Fact Probably Not Worth Knowing No. 6
Most of the deck chairs on the Queen Mary 2 have had to be replaced because overweight Americans were breaking them.

911 Flight Passenger List Oddities
by Vincent Sammartino

As everyone who is involved in exposing the 9-11 cover-up knows, nothing concerning 9-11 is as it seems. Whether it's the magic jet that our government told us crashed into the Pentagon, the obvious missing jet at Shanksville (Flight 93), the three perfect demolitions of the World Trade Center towers, or the fact that Arab hijackers are still alive and their supposed ring leader Osama bin Laden has the ability to change his facial features at will. Nothing, I repeat, nothing about the government/controlled media version of 9-11 makes any sense.
So, let's get one thing straight and out of the way right now. There are no such things as physical inconsistencies in the world we live in. We can always depend on the laws of physics to be consistent and unchanging. Coincidence is a self-contained human concept; and the real world - the atoms, molecules and planets that whiz around - don't care if you understand them. Likewise, they aren't concerned if their movement happens to favor you or not. I say this because, as Victor Thorn and Lisa Guliani know (WING TV), this is the key to understanding what is real and what is contrived. With that said, let me go back to sometime in February, 2004. At that time I had pretty much figured out that what had happened at the Pentagon and the WTC was a lie. I was still toying with the idea, though, that maybe (just maybe) our government had shot down Flight 93 in Shanksville in order to protect us from the real terrorists. Then a few websites started to pop-up showing videos of what appeared to be a "pod" under Flight 175, along with an unexplained flash that happened just before the jet hit the South Tower. . . .
. . . . . Which brings us to the 9-11 Victims Compensation Fund (also known as the Shut Up and Take the Money Fund), which most of you have heard about.

9-11 Victims Compensation Fund
This is where our government opened up the Treasury and gave family members of those who lost their lives that day lots of money. In return, these families were basically told to shut up about anything else concerning 9-11. (Considering all the lies surrounding this horrific event, you can see why.) At this point there is one thing we should never forget, and that is how powerful the notion of human greed is. Remember this concept as you read the number of victims whose family members sought compensation. The names of the victims can be found on the CNN website. Here are the results:

Flight 11: of the 92 people who are listed as dying on this flight . . . only three are on the 9-11 Victims Compensation Fund list:
Judy Larocque
Laurie Neira
Candace Lee Williams

Flight 77: of the 64 people who are listed as dying on this flight . . . only five on the 99-11 Victims Compensation Fund list:
William Caswell
Eddie Dillard
Ian Gray
John Sammartino
Leonard Taylor

Flight 175: of the 65 people who are listed as dying on this flight . . . only three are on the 9-11 Victims Compensation Fund list:
Michael C. Tarrou
Gloria Debarrera
Timothy Ward

Flight 93: of the 45 people who are listed as dying on this flight . . . none are on the 9-11 Victims Compensation Fund list. No one.

. . . Of the 266 people that we were told died on these jets, only 11 relatives applied for compensation. Can you believe that not a single relative from Flight 93 applied for compensation? I can't. Were all the relatives of the victims so rich that they weren't eligible to receive compensation? No, that's not it. (The minimum federal award was $250,000, and the average pay-out was about $1.8 million. The recipients only had to make agreement: they couldn't sue the airlines. . .) (more)
(thanks to Stephen Ross)

Fact Probably Not Worth Knowing No. 7
The microwave oven was invented by mistake when an engineer testing a magnetron tube noticed that the radiation from it melted the chocolate bar he had in his pocket.

Dead People Smoke Camels Quit smoking the EZ way! Pop this new drug, ignore your real issues. God bless America
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Oh my freaking God but I loved smoking. Loved it like a slab of chocolate-covered puppy dogs and I loved the whole gorgeous damnable ritual of the thing, the oral fixation and the regular smoke breaks with co-workers and the cigs n' coffee and the cigs n' wine and the cigs n' s@x and I had myself not one but three different all-American all-metal all-s@xy Zippo lighters the famous click/snap sounds and toxic butane scents of which I found intoxicating and soulful and I miss it all terribly.
But then again, I absolutely loathed how smoking made me feel, just afterward, the tightness of chest and shortness of breath and the wheezing, the nasty aftertaste and the phlegm and the tormented lung cilia, the constant stupid cravings and the ridiculous expense. Not to mention how it made my fingers reek and my clothes reek and my teeth yellow and my girlfriend cringe when she kissed me and of course all the filthy ashtrays and stale butts and the whole noxious karmic low-vibration poison-for-the-flesh thing. There was no pill. There was no nicotine patch or nicotine gum or nicotine-filled syringe to be administered at regular intervals like heroin. A little self-examination, a lot of self-awareness, a tiny shred of self-disgust, all pointed to one wake-up call that finally reached deep into my core and came back out and said, calmly, obviously: Enough already -- this just isn't worth it.
And now, thankfully, they're nothing but an afterthought, a hazy memory, historic ash. I quit my 12-year, one-pack-a-day habit with relative ease, cold turkey, years back, weaned myself off when I turned 30 and never really looked back, and now that California has banned smoking in all bars and restaurants and most public places and even within phlegm-hocking distance of city buildings and parks, it seems all just so archaic and weird and distant.
How quickly I forget. How easy it is to overlook that for millions of others, it's still a plague. It's still out there, raging and cancerous and unstoppable and this explains why I just read about how scientists are on the verge, right now, of inventing a magic-bullet pill that they claim will block the effects of nicotine, block the actual chemical process in your flesh that causes nicotine addiction and, should they succeed, it will prove to be a bigger and more lucrative drug than Viagra and Prozac and Ambien combined and shaken and stirred and pumped straight into your eyeballs. (article)

Fact Probably Not Worth Knowing No. 8
If the recent U.S. election had been held in Canada, John Kerry would have beaten George Bush in a landslide - 64% to 19%.

YE OLDE RECIPES

To make a Tarte of Medlers
Take medlers that be rotten, and stamp them, then set them on a chafing dish and coales, and beate in two yolkes of egges boyling it till it be somewhat thick, then season them with suger, sinamon, and ginger, and lay it in a paste.

To make Manus Christi
Take five spoonefull of Rosewater, and graines of Ambergreece, and 4 grains of Pearle beaten very fine, put these three together in a Saucer and cover it close, and let it stande covered one houre, then take foure ounces of very fine Suger, and beate it small, and search it through a fine search, then take a little earthen pot glased, and put into it a spoonefull of Suger, and a quarter of a spoonefull of Rosewater, and let the Suger and the Rosewater boyle together softelye, till it doe rise and fall againe three times. Then take fine Rie flower, and sifte on a smooth borde, and with a spoone take of the Suger, and the Rosewater, and first make it all into a roundcake and then after into little Cakes, and when they be halfe colde, wet them over with the same Rosewater, and then laye on your golde, and so shall you make very good Manus Christi

To make Pottage to Losse the Bodie
Take a chicken and seeth it in running water, then take two handfuls of violet leaves, and a good prettie sorte of reasons of the Sunne picke out the stones, and seeth them with the chickins, and when it is wel sodden, season it with a little salt and strain it and so serve it.

To make a Pye of Humbles
Take your humbles being perboiled, and choppe them verye small with a good quantitye of Mutton sewet, and halfe a handfull of hearbes folowing, time, margarom, borage, perseley, and a little rosemary and season the same being chopped, with pepper, cloves and mace, and so close your pye and bake him.

BUT SERIOUSLY . . . .

KANGAROO BRACIOLONE
(Kangaroo and Pancetta Rolls for spaghetti sauce)

I tried to make a Kangaroo Muscat (variation on veal marsala) the other night that just didnt work out to my liking. The intensity of the kangaroo flavour and the sweetness of the muscat weren't that compatible the way I put them together. (I haven't given up though! It SHOULD work.) But I had some left over kangaroo fillets so I tried this variation of my grandmother's classic Italian recipe and it came out mind-blowing! As Loretta Sartori once told me, ' The most important thing is: it has to taste good!'

Ingredients:
8 thin boneless kangaroo cutlets (about 1 pound), pounded thin
8 - 16 very thin slices pancetta
1/3 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 garlic cloves, minced with the parsley
4 tablespoons toasted pine nuts
grated pecorino or Parmigiano-Reggiano
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Method:
Pound the kangaroo cutlets with a meat pounder to stretch them and make them very thin (or ask the butcher to do this for you). Lay a slice or two of pancetta on each cutlet, then sprinkle with a teaspoon of the garlic and parsley. Scatter some red pepper flakes, pine nuts, a little parmesean cheese, and salt and pepper over the top and roll each cutlet up over the filling and tie with thread. In a deep skillet over medium-high heat, brown the kangaroo rolls on all sides in the olive oil. Remove as they brown and set aside.

Make a big pot of tomato sauce for pasta (see recipe index for ideas) and add meatballs (see recipe index again for Grandma's Meatballs), Italian sausages and the Kangaroo braciolone (and all the bits from the frying pan) and simmer over low heat for a couple of hours until the flavours are all intermingled. Either serve together in the sauce over pasta, or remove the meat and serve in a separate bowl, letting everyone choose what they want to add to their individual plates.

Fact Probably Not Worth Knowing No. 9
McDonald's restaurants will buy 54,000,000 pounds of fresh apples this year. Two years ago, McDonald's purchased 0 pounds of apples. This is attributed to the shift to more healthy menu options.

Fact Probably Not Worth Knowing No. 10
Monkeys will eat dirt. . .
If you make them.

(only kidding.)